AW! Epistles
From Dennis C
Abstract
Thursday, 30 December 2004
Mike, I have the following comments on: AskWhy! on Jesus Myths—Christianity Revealed. I’ve got to say, you provide interesting responses to Christian apologetics. I, myself, am a Christian and have read a lot on Christian apologetics and their critics. I really enjoy reading the responses between the two. However, I must apologize for some Christian apologetics because sometimes they present their argument with pride. For example, they might say, “Secular scientists are ignoramuses because…” or “they like to assume…” or “they try to get you think that…” and I apologize for that. I like their arguments, but it’s a little hard to see God’s love in them.
Well, I quite agree with what you say about God’s love, but Christian behaviour over the last two millennia has not been particularly noted for love at all. There could be no objection to Christians calling others ignorant, if they were not utterly ignorant themselves and, as you say, proud of it. There is no merit in just believing because you are told to do so, or because you have had some psychological experience that you interpret as being the work of God, but with no real reason than that you have again been told such experiences are the work of God. It really is not argument but ignorant and unwarranted assertions justified by wishful thinking.
I also wish that you, or other secular critics wouldn’t use the same… “language”. Calling each other idiots, false guides, etc, might be true, but that will just breed more and more animosity. Obliviously, one of the sides is right. However, that correct side does not need to put down the other side in their efforts to show the truth, whether that be secular or Christian. If you wish to show Christians where they error, perhaps showing an olive leaf might help. Maybe you can say, “I see where you are coming from, but there is some evidence showing the contrary. Give it a look.” Basically, I wish that the interaction between Christian apologetics and their critics would be less “hate-filled” or less “putting down” on both sides and more of an exchange of information and ideas in the hope of finding the truth.
You began by saying you were a Christian, and that explains your stance. Christianity is a minority interest even today in the Bush and Blair era, and thank goodness for that! You say it is obvious that one side is right, and that the debate ought to be ever so polite. I cannot see it that way because Christians cannot be persuaded by argument however polite we might be. They just believe for belief’s own supposed benefits. No one can argue politely with that. Christians hope that polite argument will make them look much more reasoning than they really are.
The best answer to it is utter disdain, especially in an age when Christians, like the rest of us, benefit from the discoveries of science but any re-emergence of the Christian condominium would put us back where we were in the Dark Ages—dead by slow torture when we disagree with them. Already those noted Christians, Bush and Blair, are supervising the destruction of our hard won freedoms under the pretext of guarding them. Christians murdered many other Christians, not to mention unbelievers, in the pretence, or conviction, that it was the way to save their souls. People should be allowed to do as they wish with their souls, since God, Christians tell us, gave us all free will. If God did, Christians have never agreed. God was being wishy-washy about it. Christians will be stronger on His behalf. Christianity is like the Pharisees the gospels say Jesus criticized—hypocritical—but not one of them will admit it of themselves.
So, although I can see that Christians come from an absurd beginning in their thinking, I am supposed to respect them for it. It is impossible. I have looked at Christianity historically, and it is monstrous. The only evidence to the contrary is the odd Christian who managed despite his or her affiliation to be good. My point is that Christianity does not lead to goodness, but out of smugness and hypocrisy, it leads to evil. Who can offer an olive branch to such a historically terrible institution? The truth is there already. It is the Christians who refuse to see it, because they have been preconditioned by parents, priests and pastors. Science can demonstrate the truth. Christianity cannot. It is nothing more than a mass of lies glued together with vestiges of history.
Anyway, thanks for writing. Try reading a bit more of the website, and you will appreciate the better what I am trying to say in few words.
You wrote me some stuff but I’d like to ask you a question concerning one of your statements. “My point is that Christianity does not lead to goodness, but out of smugness and hypocrisy, it leads to evil.” In a way, I agree. Christianity has led to the Crusades, to some genocides (like Hitler’s attack on the Jews), to the Inquisition and such. And to that charge, I totally agree. However, not all that Christianity has shown has led to evil. What about the works of Mother Teresa, to the preservation of writings and book from Christian monks and the numerous everyday good works of Christians around the world? Granted, not everyone that claims to be a Christian truly has Christian values. Is it possible that evils that have been traced back to Christianity actually came from individuals claiming to be Christians? I mean, every religion has people who claim to be of the religion but do not actually hold to that religion’s values. Can the religion be graded on the behavior of those individuals? I look forward to your response.
You are using the popular Christian trick of claiming as Christians only people who show through their deeds they are good. “Christian” therefore becomes a synonym for “good” by definition, and has nothing to do with God or sacred tenets in sacred books. Christians began long ago to claim that Socrates, for example, was a Christian, a man who lived 400 years before anyone noticed Jesus Christ in the world. You cite mother Theresa, and a lot of anonymous Christians who are simply ordinary folk living natural lives as naked apes—a social animal which helps others in its family and, less often, of its own kind for altruistic reasons, although Mother Theresa did little for the dying in Calcutta, except to find somewhere quiet where they could carry on dying. Christianity claims all good people as its own. We have free will, supposedly, but God takes the credit for all good deeds and leaves the wicked deeds to us!
Among the good ones, you cite Christian monks who, you say, preserved writings. Why then did these writings need preserving in the Christian era when they had been preserved without the assistance of monks for centuries before then? The truth is that Christians, bigots and dogmatists, as they are, had destroyed, and were destroying, any books that they did not like, until many were lost forever, and others continued to decay in a few monastic vaults. It is true that, at this stage of the Dark Ages, some monks, few though they were, did try to preserve some learning. Most, though, carried on killing books and people they did not agree with.
These wicked men that do wicked things even though they say they are Christians are just odd characters who do not really hold to the values of Christianity, you say. But, if that is the case, why are not the real honest and good Christians outraged that their holy order has been taken over by people of a Satanic disposition? Is it because the wicked Christians would kill them by burning them from their feet upwards, as slowly as possible? Why should that bother real Christians convinced that God is on their side, and guaranteeing them a place in heaven. They should still be outraged and try to achieve justice for those being wronged. Today 60 million US “Christians” vote for a President who has invaded a foreign country for its oil, and killed, through his Christian policies, anything up to 100,000 Arabs without any sign of compunction—quite the opposite, with a rare smugness. He has also, in doing this, sacrificed the lives of over 1000 innocent Americans, Christians many of them. Where are the Christians appalled at this hypocrisy?
Religion is graded on its outcomes. Your own God told you so. He said as plainly as can be that any tree is known by its fruit.
“Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.” Matthew 7:17-19.
“And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.” Matthew 3:10
The sign of a rotten tree is its rotten fruit. Note that good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit. The main crop of the Christian tree is, and always has been, rotten. Your own god told you that you should take the axe to it, chopping it down by the roots and burning it. The medieval Church did this to individuals opposed to the institution of the Church, though the Church itself was the rotten tree the individuals were opposed to. People who are misguided by Christianity cannot be treated the way Jesus said false prophets should be treated. In His Holy Word Part I, God says categorically that human beings must not kill, but Christians have always found ways round this commandment, by using God’s own example and the contradictions in the Holy Word. One might naïvely imagine that a commandment is a rather stern instruction, and being one of only ten or so, it has been picked out as being more important than other possible commandments, not explicitly so called. Such matters are of no concern to the Christian who is ever ready, like the Moslems and Jews in their related religions, to kill people they disagree with.
I now apologise for a lengthy reply, but you did say you were looking forward to it.
No apology is needed, I do enjoy reading your responses. Perhaps, as you say, all Christians are hypocrites, bent on evil and destruction, and what not (perhaps a small exaggeration on my part on your words :), but anyways), can’t the same be said about most other religions? Islam has claimed to be of love and peace and yet, they kill “infidels” and use their religion to justify terrorism. Mormonism is known for its charity and love and yet, if a family member leaves that faith, he is essentially cut off from the family. With the paganism religion of emperor worship and worship of the gods during the Roman Empire Era, if a person were to join the Christian faith, weren’t they persecuted? In that case, is it safe to say that all religions are evil? And if that were the case, they would all be false and the atheists would be correct in their standing. However, discarding religion still doesn’t explain how this planet, the life within it and the universe came into being? Was it a big bang with an explosion of all matter? My stance is that the big bang explosion cannot be the answer because how can there be an explosion of matter before matter was in existence? I understand with the universe expanding, that that evidence certainly points to an expansion from a certain point and thus could be considered evidence for the bang, but I would disagree. Your stance?
Religions that have their source in Judaism, the so-called patriarchal religions, seem to me to have a particularly horrible track record. I frankly doubt that religions based on supernatural gods can offer us anything. Our world is real, and the problems we face are real ones. Supernatural beliefs lead people into thinking that supernatural practices will solve their real problems. They will not. What they do is lead to a sort of holier-than-thou attitude whereby adult men and women behave like children saying, “My god is better than yours, so there!” Before long, they are killing each other in the name of the god they are supposed to be defending. It is childish behaviour because it preserves the childishness of the early days of human development. We need to move beyond this excruciatingly infantile behaviour, but Christians are convinced infantilism, like ignorance and filth, is a virtue.
So, you come to a different problem, no longer a social one but one of origins. Your Judaeo-Christian explanation seems to satisfy you, but it is not an explanation. It is simply a myth that serves as an explanation for those happy to accept it. There is not the least bit of practical evidence that this origins myth is true, and almost everything we have discovered about the world says it is false. Why then keep on believing it? It is like a drunken man who would like to give up the drink but cannot because he has no adequate substitute for it. Just giving up with no substitute would be better, but the scientific explanation does at least use the evidence we have, rather than ignoring it as Christians must.
As for exploding matter, all explosions are caused by something coming into existence that was not there before. Ordinary TNT explodes because a rapid chemical reaction releases a lot of energy that was previously in the form of matter. The energy converts some of the matter into gases and they expand in the heat causing an explosion. What we might be learning about, for the first time, is that all matter and energy can withdraw into a veiled state called a field where changes go on continually in a virtual time, understood mathematically, but out of our own direct experience. When something causes a part of this activity to leak into real time, a big bang occurs. But unlike religion, science is a learning process, not a sudden revelation of all. It is the process that is so interesting. We have control over it, not God, but Nature has ultimate control over itself.
